Visiting the Thailand Countryside

A few days in Bangkok was enough to remind us of why we love sailing. With 6 million people bustling and hustling around the proverbial clock, and a steady din of car horns, vendor calls, and the constant drone of a city in constant vibration, we were ready to take a bus to the city of Khorat, about 3 hours northwest of Bangkok, and labeled the gateway to Thailand's first national park: Khao Yai. Thailand is just getting the hang of these national parks, and like many of the US parks, this one's entrance is lined with souvenir shops, theme parks, and restaurants. Once inside, though, it fulfills its promise as one of Southeast Asia's largest intact monsoon rain forests. It being the dry season, however, we were not in need of umbrellas.

We hired a car for the day ($50 with driver), and visited the park in the morning; by the time we arrived, the dawn feeding time at large mammals' various salt licks and waterholes had passed, so our views were limited to the geography and the occasional pig-tailed macques. The gibbons -- the park's most famous apes -- were audible but not visible. There are also a number of waterfalls and streams that cross the park; the air was cool, and mercifully, aside from the howls of animals, the park was quiet.

On the way back to Khorat, we passed by one of the the province's other major attractions -- the silk-weaving center of Pak Thong Chai. While much of Thailand's silk exports are machine produced, the hand-woven silk of Pak Thong Chai is much prized. We visited one of the weaving centers, and aside from the sheer tedium of weaving on wooden looms, the overwhelming impression was that of how single strands of seemingly-invisible silk can be woven into fiercely durable fabrics. The complexity of the patterns was also hard to untangle, knowing that any pattern required an elaborate interchange of the threading spools that flew left-to-right at blinding speed between the foot-separated strands of silk that run up-and-down the pattern. Above, left, these up-and-down strands are carefully pulled from the single bundle of silk on the bottom left of the picture, and below right, the various colors of silk are spun off from large spools onto the threading spools. A quiet clack-clack of the bellowing looms served as the backdrop to the swoosh of the these threading spools passing back and forth, left-to-right, being woven into the fabric.

We ended our tour of the Khorat countryside with a visit to Dan Kwian, where local potters and ceramic makers turn out large wall murals of Buddhas and animal scenes for Thai homes. This local pottery is famous within Thailand, but the pieces small and light enough to ship home were far too ordinary, and the noteworthy pieces were far too heavy and large to ship home.

Spending a few days outside of Bangkok was good for our ears and noses -- even as the hustle and bustle of downtown Khorat rivaled that of the quiter neighborhoods of Bangkok. We return to Thailand's more remote provinces later this year, by boat, when we sail up the southern coast to Phuket. A few more days in Bangkok, and then on to Vietnam.